Vacuum cleaners in use today typically are of the upright variety or the horizontal variety. The horizontal vacuum cleaners comprise a canister and vacuum chamber which is coupled to a cleaning attachment by a flexible hose. The cleaning attachment is pushed and pulled over the surface to be cleaned. In upright vacuum cleaners, the cleaning head and vacuum chamber are integrated as one unit. The upright vacuum includes a handle for pushing and pulling the vacuum over the surface to be cleaned.
To provide additional flexibility of operation, some upright vacuum cleaners are convertible. Such vacuum cleaners have a handle which comprises a flexible hose and rigid wand combination. The rigid wand slidably fits inside the flexible hose. In normal upright operation, the wand is locked to the vacuum chamber and provides a rigid handle for pushing and pulling the vacuum in the upright mode. To provide an easy handling vacuum attachment, the wand is disengageable from the vacuum chamber and a vacuum nozzle can be attached to the one end of the wand, for example to clean drapes. The wand and flexible hose arrangement can now be used in much the same manner as for a horizontal vacuum.
It will be appreciated that in some situations, the person using the vacuum appliance will want to remove the wand and just use the vacuum nozzle attached to the flexible hose. A known release mechanism comprises a cuff attached to the end of the flexible hose. The cuff keeps the wand in place by a friction fit. To detach the wand from the hose requires pulling or tugging the wand through the constriction of the cuff. While providing a secure attachment this arrangement suffers two principle drawbacks. First, it is clearly inconvenient to tug the wand through the constriction of the cuff. Secondly, and more importantly, repeated tugging to release the ward can damage the cuff/hose coupling, thereby requiring repair or replacement.